DATA TALK: Television isn’t as easy a sell as it once was. With ratings in the doldrums and money slowly but surely migrating to digital channels, networks are heading into the critical upfront ad market armed with data and analytics tools they hope will convince marketers that TV can be a little more like the Web, The Wall Street Journal reports. At a posh dinner for advertisers in New York’s Rainbow Room, NBCU, for example, had guests sit through a five-hour seminar called “The Future of Content, Data & Technology.” Ad executives at Turner are offering a new program to help, say, a yogurt company target yogurt buyers–as opposed to using broad demographic categories like age and gender. All the while, TV networks like CBS and ESPN have been making the case to advertisers that Web advertising is rife with its own set of problems, things like bots and “viewability” issues. Of course, the fact that the TV folks feel that they have to deride digital speaks to just how much pressure they are facing.

VOX BOSS: Sites like SB Nation, Curbed, Eater, Racked and the Verge make up the Vox Media network, a burgeoning force in the digital media world valued at $380 million. At the helm of Vox Media is Chief Executive Jim Bankoff, who sat down with the WSJ to discuss things like the rise in video and branded content. Mr. Bankoff described online media in three broad phases. The first phase was when newspapers and magazines, eager to use the Web, put their content online for free. The second phase was a “race to the bottom where everyone was trying to game algorithms and use engineering or SEO arbitrage.” Now, Mr. Bankoff says, we are in the third phase, which is “distinguished by multiple forms of distribution, rich media–video in particular–mobile access and high quality production.” Of course, those multiple forms of distribution–the idea that publishers would post directly to platforms like Facebook and Snapchat, for example–are what could make the fourth phase of online media vastly different.

CHANNELING VICE: Vice Media’s TV ambitions continue to grow. Not long ago, the edgy content producer cut a deal to do a daily newscast for HBO. Now, the company will get a TV channel as part of a deal with A+E Networks, reports the New York Post. Vice, which also took a $250 million investment from A+E in exchange for a 10% stake, will populate the H2 channel with its lifestyle programming–which covers topics ranging from music to cooking to pot. For Vice, the strategy is becoming clear: convert its traction with young people and its brand power online into a TV business. For A+E, the move is a way to give a little-known network a bit of cachet, assuming pay-TV distributors go along with the switch.

NEWSHOUND: Google has extended a $164 million olive branch to European publishers amid tensions over how the Web giant clips and distributes news on its platform, WSJ reports. Google will spend the money on grants for digital journalism projects, a move likely meant in part to ameliorate the company’s tenuous position in Europe, where it faces antitrust charges. European publishers have criticized Google News for grabbing headlines and other content without paying for it. Publishers that didn’t play along would get their stories dropped entirely, drying up a crucial source of Web traffic. Last year, Google News abandoned Spain rather than pay publishers there for linking to their articles. Whether the new program, which includes publishers like the U.K.’s Financial Times, Spain’s El Pais and Italy’s La Stampa, can soothe both sides remains to be seen.